Essential ingredients for a loving partnership

Are you trying to build a loving and long lasting relationship? These are the essential ingredients you need to focus on cultivating.

by: E.B. Johnson

While a romantic relationship isn’t on everyone’s bucket list, it forms a major part of the happiness puzzle for many of us. Humans are social creatures and, alongside that need to socialize, we often find ourselves with a craving for deep and unflinching connection. This longing is traditionally filled by an intimate partner, but the building a fulfilling relationship with them is hardly ever as easy as it seems.

There are a lot of moving pieces that go into building an intimate connection with someone else. We have to want them and trust them, but we also have to accept them and empathize with them too. It takes a lot of time and a lot of commitment to create a relationship that each partner can rely on for support and understanding. All of us can learn how to build these types of partnerships, though, by cultivating the right frame of mind and perspective about the lives we share together.

Relationships require equal work and effort.

In the early days, our relationships come easy as passions are at an all-time high. We crave getting close to one another; we crave learning more about one another. As time goes on, though, these connections take a little more work to foster. Each partner has to have the same level of commitment, but beyond that both partners have to be heading in the same direction. This means wanting the same things and working toward the general goals in life.

Relationships require real work and real effort. Initial bonding might come easy, but staying together through thick and thing requires so much more. We must be compassionate with one another and have an ability to forgive. We must laugh together, but also be supportive when the tears come (as the inevitably will).

Being in love means riding the highest of highs, and overcoming the lowest of lows — as a team, and as a partnership. We have to come to the tables as equal and we have to approach one another in absolute understanding. We all just want to be seen and valued within our relationships, but before we can do that, we have to value ourselves. Create realistic expectations and nurture your inner world. Then you can come together and build a more fulfilling relationship all around.

The essential ingredients for a loving relationship.

Creating a loving and fulfilling partnerships isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t magic either. The best relationships come simply as a result of partners who are aligned, equally committed, and working toward the same ultimate goals in life. With all of these unities to hand, staying connected over the hardships becomes a much more realistic feat to manage.

Ability to forgive

Forgiveness is a crucial component of the successful relationship, but it’s one that many of us struggle to utilize. We humans are flawed creatures, and we often come with a lot of mental and emotional damage. Along with this damage comes flaws and our ability to make mistakes. No one is perfect. We all get it wrong sometimes. That’s why it’s important to find someone who can see the humanity beneath our mistakes; someone capable of forgiveness, even when it’s hard.

Willing to communicate

Love can’t bloom without communication, and intimate partnerships can’t last if that communication doesn’t happen willingly. We should want to talk to our partners. We should want to share with them and run to them first with all the news that we have — the good and the bad. How willing are you to communicate with your loved one or spouse? How willing are they to communicate with you? Until you can both open up easily, you’re going to stumble into heartache and misunderstandings.

Love for laughter

Though we can easily dismiss it as a “superficial” trait, having a partner who values laughter is so important in building long-term and lifelong relationships that are worthwhile. A partner with a love for laughter is a partner who is able to find the silver lining, even when we aren’t. In the darkest of moments we can find ourselves desperately grateful for someone who is willing to turn a light on (even if it’s on themselves and their own shortcomings).

Seeking understanding

Successful relationships aren’t just made up of partners who love one another. You can’t love someone without understanding them. That’s why the best partnerships are those in which both parties work hard to see where the other person is coming from. Rather than accepting behavior, they dig deeper. They ask questions and study their partner for who they are as a whole. In that way, they are better able to see the perspective or angle their partner is coming from.

Endless trust

No relationship can last without a solid and endless foundation of trust to bolster it. Being in an intimate partnership with someone means opening up. It means being vulnerable and showing them the tenderest parts of ourselves and our humanity. If we can’t trust the person we open up to, we end up getting hurt, and that teaches us toxic lessons which take a lifetime to unlearn. Without trust, no relationship is solid. Without that belief, no two people can last.

Mutual commitment

Relationships can’t last when they’re a one-sided affair. For that reason, they require mutual commitment and a mutual agreement to put in the same amount of effort as the other partner. Are you and your loved one putting in the same amount of effort? Is one of you more emotionally invested than the other? This adds up and becomes a serious problem over time. One which creates resentment, contempt, and increased conflict.

Heading the same way

Are you and your loved one heading the same way in life? What are your shared goals? Your ultimate visions for the future? You can have all the commonalities in the world, but it will mean nothing if you’re not working toward the same things in life. Having the same color or taste in movies means nothing if you’re not exerting your effort toward the same idea of happiness as the other person. At the first sign of trouble, one of you will bolt in the direction you’re meant to.

How to cultivate these features for yourselves.

If the above features aren’t a part of your relationship, they can be. By looking inward and then looking toward one another, you can create more realistic expectations and master your communication with one another. Both of you have to come to the table ready to work, though, and you have to remember to nurture your inner world as well as the outer one.

1. Create realistic expectations

One of the first steps we should always engage in before jumping into a serious commitment with someone is that of creating realistic expectations. Relationships mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. We have to take time on our own to consider what we actually need from our partnerships, and we have to ensure that we aren’t asking our loved ones for anything ridiculous or out of this world.

Take a step outside of your relationship for a moment and take a deep breath. Close your eyes and spend a few minutes imagining your perfect partnership. Shedding any ridiculous dreams of movie stars or supermodels, imagine the perfect person who makes you feel seen, validated, wanted, and accepted.

What does that relationship look like? What emotions do you feel when you imagine it? Take some time to write these things down. Look at your current relationship. What is missing between the relationship that provides fulfillment and the one you have right now? Strip away all the superficial things you’re looking for and get down to the center of things. What are you willing to provide? Never ask a partner to give or provide more than you can.

2. Nurture empathy

Empathy is a foundation of every successful relationship. One could think of empathy a bit like the fuel that keeps our partnerships going. Through this deeper sense of compassion, we are better able to connect with our partners and understand their needs and perspective. This allows us to see past the nonsense when things get challenging, in order to stay focused on both the goals we share for the future and the love we’re building.

Nurture your empathy. Strive every day to see things from your partner’s point-of-view and strive to understand where they’re coming from. Emotional awareness is crucial here. Consider your own emotions? How do they make you feel? How do they make you react and respond? Your partner is no different.

Even within our relationships, we each still have our own personal worlds to reckon with. We’re all dealing with individual levels of stress, responsibility, and trauma that can make it hard to connect, open up, and relate to one another. Look beyond face values. If you’re not getting the intimacy and bonding that you want, peel back the surface. What is feeding your partners hurts? Their need to withdraw? When we empathize with them, we can often discover the answers.

3. Master communication

It would be hard to imagine an intimate relationship without the benefit of communication. Communication is the tool through which we connect with one another and establish our likes, dislikes, and expectations. When we fail to communicate with one another, we end up with misunderstandings, resentment, and disaster — with partners separating off into their own strange divides and misconceptions.

You and your partner have to communicate if you want to build something worth holding on to. You need to talk to one another, relate to one another, and open up about your experiences, your feelings, and all those other things that make you human.

When something is wrong sit down (sooner rather than later) and talk things out. Take a direct path to resolution. Find a comfortable time and place and then express your own emotions without using blaming language. Explain how things look from where you’re sitting and then leave room for your partner to do the same. The more you communicate, the easier it becomes to be candid and honest with one another at all times.

4. Seek solutions to conflict

Too often, we allow our egos to become bigger players in our relationships than our hearts. When this happens, we can find that we often chase a feeling of superiority or “rightness” over our chase for solutions when things go wrong. Fights are going to happen. Conflict is a part of every single relationship. How we manage it, though, is what really signifies whether we have the strength to keep things together or not.

What happens when you and your partner get into a disagreement or an argument? Do you each try to keep focused on solutions, or does it become a blame game of who did right and who did wrong? Drop the tit-for-tat and get real about your partnership. Do you want this to work? Then you have to be solutions focused.

Stop worrying about winning all your invisible competitions with one another and center your victories around finding peace again. If you only seek to be right, you’ll never know what it is to be loved by yourself or by others. Sometimes it’s necessary to leave the blame in the past and focus on who is going to take action to fix things in the future. Once you can seek resolution over the easing of your ego, you’ll be prepared to look toward the long-term.

5. Grow your inner world

Falling in love with someone is exciting and invigorating, too often though we allow this excitement to derail us from our own personal growth and discovery. We have a tendency to stop right where we’re at once we find a partner that is willing to go the distance. The problem here, though, is that we then stop growing as both people and partners. For our relationships to be happy, we have to be happy — and that’s something that happens primarily through the search for fulfilling love.

Your relationship isn’t the end of your life, nor is it the end of your journey. IF anything, your real self-discovery is just getting started. Building a life with someone else is complicated, and it is messy. In order to navigate the waters successfully, you need to know exactly who you are and exactly what you are capable of.

Fall in love with yourself. Nourish your body and your soul outside of your relationship. This isn’t to say that you should fall into the arms of someone else. On the contrary, you simply need to get back in touch with those inner strengths and passions that help you become a more completed version of yourself. Allow your interests and your joy to seduce you once more; follow those pastimes and intrigues that gave you life. When we find ourselves, we discover how to be better partners.

Putting it all together…

When it comes to building the perfect relationship, there are some essential ingredients that we should always seek to incorporate. Rather than allowing ourselves to slip into pain and disconnect, we should seek out partners who are willing to communicate and willing to work toward the same goals. While no relationship is perfect, we can learn to cultivate the right beliefs and behaviors that make our relationships that much sweeter for the building.

Create realistic expectations for your partner and your relationship. Figure out what really matters to you and figure out what you realistically have to offer. Nurture empathy and know that no relationship is perfect. Try to see things from their perspective when things go wrong and forgive mistakes that are made in genuine error. When we hold on to hurts, we make it impossible to stay connected. Talk to one another and make honest communication a foundation of the life you’re building together. Things will go wrong, and that’s okay. Seek solutions over conflict, and whatever you do — continue to grow your inner world and your inner sense of self and worth. The stronger we are as individuals, the stronger we become as partners, lovers, and friends.